BORIS vs FrameQuery

BORIS is free and open-source software for coding video and audio and recording live observations. Media tools include frame-by-frame navigation, playback speeds from 0.1× to 100×, and synchronized playback of up to eight files. Users can define unlimited behaviors, subjects, modifiers, and independent variables, with behaviors recorded as state or point events. Analysis options include Cohen’s Kappa inter-rater reliability, transition matrices, flow diagrams, time-budget analysis, and graphical views of coded data. Coded events can be exported in formats including TSV, CSV, HTML, ODS, XLSX, SQL, Pandas and R dataframes, SDIS, Praat TextGrid, and JWatcher formats. BORIS also imports JWatcher Global Definition Files and Noldus The Observer XT templates. Live event logging is available in the desktop program and Android app. The Android app is version 0.13 and marked beta for testing only. Data is stored in JSON; download files are GPG-signed, with a public key available for integrity checks. The project warns that backward compatibility of project files is not guaranteed and recommends regular backups.

FrameQuery makes video footage searchable by dialogue, on-screen content and people. Indexing identifies scene context, objects, faces, voices and speech, with transcripts separated by speaker; after indexing, searches run locally and work offline without a per-query charge. It supports more than 50 formats, including R3D, BRAW, ProRes, H.264, H.265, MKV and MXF. Sources include local folders, S3, SMB, Dropbox and Google Drive, while sharing or backup can use Drive, Dropbox or NAS. Search results can be exported to editing workflows such as Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Avid using formats including FCPXML, Premiere XML, EDL and LosslessCut. A web review page offers frame-accurate comments, drawing annotations, approvals and side-by-side version comparison. Face and voice recognition run on-device with explicit consent, but selected frames and extracted audio go to cloud services for analysis and transcription. The Free plan has no monthly indexing hours. Starter costs $19 a month and includes 10 hours of video per month. Its API is planned but not available yet.